London’s buried diggers…

One popular way to increase space and add value to a home is to develop a basement space, especially in areas such as London and its suburbs. One phenomenon which has been born from this need to build down is the fact that future archeologists when excavating areas in London will be shocked by the amount of diggers they find left in under properties.

The reason for this glut in buried diggers is has been born from the fact that it costs builder less to leave them in situ than paying for them to be removed. To begin with developers would often use large cranes to retrieve the diggers that were left in the depths of an underground cavern. But the process was very difficult, first of all a crane would need to be hired, then the entire road would have to be closed for a day or so, which would invariably upset people in neighbouring properties. So in the end construction companies weighed up the costs and decided that it would be cheaper to leave the diggers buried under their sites.

The new method of leaving a digger in place is to cover it with hardcore, a mixture of sand and gravel. Then poor a layer of concrete over the top. It is estimated that between 500 and 1,000 buried diggers are buried underneath London basements.